BRIAN Beacom (“Time to return to the values priests once represented”, The Herald, August 10) can forget about a large number of new ordinary priests, that is celibate, with five years of theology and supported by a parish. Previously an effective way of providing the Eucharist, like DDT and the car, equally effective in their own role, they are victims of the law of diminishing returns, as the figure of 50,000 empty parishes worldwide shows. Clericalism has played its part, but while in the old song Father O’Flynn had a wonderful way with him, now the young children are running away from him, and the priest has thus, worldwide, an image not far removed from leprosy despite the small percentage involved.
I doubt if any of Graham Greene’s tortured clerics did much for vocations. Those with long memories and the TCM movie channel will remember Pat O’Brien, Spencer Tracy and Gregory Peck as reflecting an inspiring priestly activity of the kind Mr Beacom recalls. But Farley Granger and Henry Fonda also played the part, the latter looking like the kind of confessor who would hand out five decades of the rosary in confession for lateness at Mass at the drop of a biretta.
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